Agatha of Little Neon Read online

  * * *

  Abbess Paracleta showed us around the house, listing rules as she went. She had more rules than Mother Roberta. No napping on the rust-colored corduroy couch in the front room. No TV after 10:00, and no hogging the remote. She showed us the collection of board games in the hall closet: no gambling, no foul play, and no dirty words or proper nouns in Scrabble.

  The residents of Little Neon—Neons, she called them, so we would, too—slept on the second floor in shared rooms (no sex; no co-sleeping; no kissing; no hugs longer than three seconds; no holding hands). The rooms were spare and the beds narrow. There wasn’t any clutter, save for balled-up socks in the front room and a comic book splayed open on the floor of the other. “The boys in the front room—Tim Gary and Pete and Baby. Jill and Horse out back,” the abbess said. “You can move the beds around, if you have to. If someone leaves, and someone else comes in.”

  “Why would someone leave?” Mary Lucille asked.

  “That’s the whole point of being here: someday you leave. When the time comes. When your parole’s up. But no one’s very close. Baby has another eight months. Pete has eleven.”

  Frances said, “And the others—”

  “They’re here to quit something. And once they’re healthy enough, they leave, too.” She led us downstairs. “It’s pretty simple. To live in Little Neon, all they have to do is keep their jobs and stay off drugs and follow all the rules. And in turn, I hope you’ll try to show them that their lives aren’t over, even if they’ve messed up,” she said, and turned back to look at us. “Only dead is dead.”

  * * *

  In the kitchen, there was a long dining table with a dozen mismatched chairs and an old white fridge (no energy drinks; no alcohol, obviously, and no drugs; no smoking on the property); the chore wheel (dishes, toilets, mop, vacuum, dust); the medicine cabinet (which was locked at all times; she whispered the code). Dinner was at 6:00 and curfew was 10:00 p.m. sharp, unless someone had to work third shift, but they could only work third shift with permission.

  Sunday Mass was not required, but strongly encouraged. “Nonbelievers go for the donuts after,” she said. Monday morning, we were to administer drug tests; we could also test at random and break out the Breathalyzer whenever we had reason to. Pee cups and test sticks were under the bathroom sink. No midriffs, no bikinis, no spandex, no cleavage, no razors, no candles, no guests.

  On the fridge door was a list of phone numbers. “Parole officers and sponsors up top,” Abbess Paracleta said. “Methadone clinic and parish contacts underneath.”

  “What’s methadone?” Mary Lucille said.

  “It’s what they give you to help you quit opiates,” Abbess Paracleta said.

  “And opiates,” Therese said, “are drugs derived from opium. Heroin, morphine, codeine—”

  “I know what opiates are,” Mary Lucille said.

  Abbess Paracleta led us out the back door. On the edge of the driveway there was a low basketball hoop, the net gone threadbare, and a stiff green garden hose. And beyond that, a half acre of high grass left untended, a single oak tree in the middle.

  We squinted in the sun. “Lots of room for a garden,” Frances said. She knelt down and touched the soil. “Hardy greens would take just fine. And root vegetables. Unless there’s no gardening allowed?”

  “There can be gardening,” Abbess Paracleta said. “That’s not a bad idea.”

  I pointed at a white pine box. “What’s that?”

  “A beehive,” she said. “Or, it used to be. The old bees did not winter well.” We watched her walk over to the hive and open it up with her bare hands. No bees came out. She pulled free a rectangular sheet, like a file from a cabinet, and showed us the dozens of dead bee carcasses, stuck to the beeswax. “Tim Gary was the one who handled them. He loved the bees. Last winter he sealed the hive in plastic and poured in a pound of sugar,” she told us, “which usually works to tide the bees over. But somehow snow and cold got in, and they all froze to death.”

  “Oh, that’s terrible,” Mary Lucille said. “Terribleterribleterrible.”

  Abbess Paracleta nodded and slipped the beeswax back in the hive.

  “Can we play basketball?” Therese said. “I know how to change a net.”

  “Sure,” the abbess said. “There can be basketball.”

  “What if we hung a bird feeder?” Mary Lucille said. “Just a small one, near the window. Would that be okay?”

  “Why not. But I wouldn’t put it near the house,” Abbess Paracleta said, leaning on the beehive. “They’ll crash into the glass. Better to hang it from the oak.”

  Mary Lucille said, “But then I won’t be able to watch the birds.”

  “Well,” Abbess Paracleta said, “that’s not really the point, is it?”

  * * *

  She told us people used to come and unscrew the porch lights if they couldn’t find any other scrap metal to sell, so she’d screwed a glass fixture around them. “Soda cans, I like to leave near the street, so whoever needs them doesn’t have to walk up the drive and rifle through the trash,” she said.

  In Little Neon’s driveway there was a wide white van. Not a minivan, like our old Mercury Villager, but a big, box-like thing. Church property. “Pete is the one who drives,” the abbess said, standing in front of it. “With permission, of course. And supervision—one of you will have to go along every time he drives. Or you can drive, if you’d rather. It’s tricky to park this thing, but he’s good at it. Maybe he can teach you.”

  We all looked at Therese. She put a hand to the hood and smiled. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I’d love to take this baby for a spin.”

  In the garage there was a filing cabinet where Abbess Paracleta kept alphabetized folders with information on every Neon. Medical histories, police reports, court paperwork, the abbess’s handwritten notes on each person. “Anyone breaks a rule, or acts out, you have to write it down. Make sure there’s a record. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what?” Frances asked.

  “Just in case.”

  * * *

  We were standing in the kitchen when two women came home. The first through the door was tall, even taller than Abbess Paracleta, and leaner, wearing a big purple parka and black leggings despite the heat, her thickish hair piled atop her head. “Most people call me Lawnmower Jill,” she said, or L.J. for short, “on account of I drive a lawnmower everywhere.” She couldn’t drive a car because she had tried too often to drive a car while drunk.

  The other woman stood no taller than five feet, and her hair was shorn close. She introduced herself as Horse. “Like the animal,” she said. She wore work boots and canvas pants, and she’d sweated through the neck of her T-shirt. Acne scars marked the skin of her face.

  “Why Horse?” Therese said.

  “She can fall asleep standing up,” Lawnmower Jill said.

  “Also, the heroin,” Horse said. She looked like she was twenty years older than us, but we found out later it was just a few years’ difference.

  “But her real name’s Eleanor,” Abbess Paracleta said. “What happened to Pete?”

  “A meeting,” Horse said. “With Baby.”

  “Pete works with Horse at the granite yard,” the abbess told us. “Every day they go out and install new countertops for people. They do really beautiful work. You should see it. The yard has huge slabs of marble in pink and white, feldspar and quartz, and it’s just gorgeous when it’s all finished and smooth and shining. And Jill—”

  “I work at the convenience store,” Lawnmower Jill said. “The Tedeschi. I make sure the chips get hung up right.” She took off her parka and revealed a red vest, a name tag pinned near her armpit.

  “How nice,” Mary Lucille said. “What a blessing. It’s wonderful that you have somewhere to go and something to do.” She was quoting Mother Roberta. It’s what Mother Roberta used to say a person needed in life: somewhere to go and something to do. She said it to give a person hope. But when Mary Lucille said it, i
t sounded like pity.

  Lawnmower Jill just blinked. For a moment, no one said anything. Then Therese asked Lawnmower Jill what kind of mower she drove.

  “A 1998 John Deere Bronco,” she said. She turned and went upstairs until dinner.

  * * *

  Pete and Baby showed up in time to eat. Pete had a bald head and a red face, and he looked maybe fifty. And Baby was young, teenage, his face rosy with acne, limbs lanky and tattooed. He told us he worked at the ice factory.

  “Ice,” Frances said. “Like, cubes?”

  “Yeah, cubes,” he said.

  “Just cubes?” Therese said.

  “Blocks, too,” Baby said.

  “Neat,” Mary Lucille said. “Or should I say—cool.”

  Therese groaned.

  We crowded around the table, the abbess at the head. I chose a seat between Baby and Tim Gary.

  For us, Abbess Paracleta had fried pork chops and boiled potatoes and served peaches in halves. Poured room-temp birch bark soda straight, no ice. On the table, the food steamed, and I salivated while we waited to pray. Baby snuck a piece of potato and Horse slapped his hand.

  For Tim Gary, Abbess Paracleta toasted bread and buttered it limp. She scrambled an egg and sliced a banana and stuck a straw in a glass of whole milk. She placed it before him, and he told her, before he tried his food, that what was in front of him was the best dinner he’d ever had.

  And that’s when Tim Gary started to cry. Tiny, pained gasps. He palmed fast at his cheeks and eyes.

  Mary Lucille said, “What is it, Tim Gary?”

  He said, “Oh, I just feel blessed, is all.” He sipped his milk, and when some dribbled from his mouth, Abbess Paracleta lifted a napkin to his chin.

  We reached to hold hands. Abbess Paracleta issued a prayer of gratitude and ended with the words “May God’s work be done here in Woonsocket.”

  13.

  After dinner, Tim Gary wanted to show us the wind turbines.

  “Oh, they’re beautiful,” Pete said. “You have to see them. I can drive.”

  I thought this sounded like a nice idea, but I could see from my sisters’ faces this was not what they wanted. They were tired from the trip. They looked like they wanted hot tea and to sleep until dawn. But they kept this to themselves.

  “We have to make it brief,” the abbess said. “I have to get back to Providence.” So Pete fired up the white van. All of Little Neon went, and Abbess Paracleta, too. When we climbed in, Therese asked Pete, “What kind of engine we got in this thing?”

  “V-eight,” he said. “Three hundred horsepower.”

  Therese nodded with approval. “Listen to her purr!”

  The van could sit fifteen. The four of us sat in the middle, though it occurred to me that maybe it was selfish to always take the safest seats. The seats were cracked plastic, the backs pimpled with chewed gum.

  Pete drove through town with the unhurried calm of a confident man. He seemed to know every stop sign and pothole. We passed the fill station, where bright lights made the pumps seem to hover above the earth, and we went by a tavern, Nick’s, but the first letter had burnt out, so it looked like ICK’S. Blockbuster, credit union, methadone clinic, dollar store, payday loans, the Tedeschi with a special on two-liters of pop (“There’s where the Lord’s called me to work,” Lawnmower Jill said when we passed). The bus lurched over the Blackstone River, which looked like sludge in the night. Then we got to gliding on Cumberland Street.

  * * *

  Outside the bus, I stood, stunned.

  The turbines surrounded us, but all we could see were their tiny red lights that blinked against the black night. Warning signs in excess. The lights flashed, steady and in synchrony, and I spun to see them, to confirm that yes, the turbines behind me blinked with the turbines before me. The red lights stretched forever, dim off in the distance and severe near the road.

  These were the same windmills I had seen from the Greyhound. They’d seemed proud in daytime, but in the dark they struck me as anxious. Afraid.

  Tim Gary said, “Let’s go look up close.”

  We followed him single file through damp grass. Baby stopped to look at something that clung to his shoe. Mary Lucille stopped, too, and shrieked to identify, when she bent over to see, the wet, limp body of a fallen bat.

  “Bat!” she cried. “Bat! Bat! Batbatbatbatbatbatbatbatbat!”

  “Calm down,” Lawnmower Jill said. “It’s just a bat.”

  Tim Gary went and looked. He said, “Some days, there’s hundreds of them.”

  Up close, the turbines were fat and serene as ships. The whir was like passing traffic. I knocked the metal to hear the hollow ring. The wind rushed at me as I walked circles around the giant glinting tubes, careful to step over the puckered bodies of bats. The red lights flashed on and off and on again.

  Tim Gary showed us the low staircase and the oval door the engineers used to enter the turbines for maintenance. He said, “I’ve been up there. They let me go up. I can see our elm tree, looking out west, and on a clear day, I can count the rooftops.”

  Mary Lucille asked if there was anything to do about the bats. “There’s no good reason they should have to die,” she said. “Maybe the turbines can be turned off at night, when bats are liable to go flying.”

  “That makes no sense,” Lawnmower Jill said.

  “Yeah. We need all that nighttime wind,” Pete said.

  “It’s not just bats, either. I’ve seen crows, a couple of hawks,” Tim Gary said, “once an eagle.”

  Mary Lucille clucked her tongue. “The poor things.”

  “What are you gonna do,” Lawnmower Jill said, a skewed smile on her face, “pray for them?”

  Mary Lucille’s face sank. Abbess Paracleta turned and said, “Lawnmower Jill, that’s no way to talk.”

  Lawnmower Jill said, “It was just a joke.”

  “Well, it’s not funny. It’s mean. You’re better than that.”

  It was quiet a while. I wished Frances or Therese or Mary Lucille would come up with something bright to say and change the subject, but the three of them were staring at the grass.

  Then, Tim Gary: “You know, another time, I saw a griffin.”

  “Griffins aren’t real,” the abbess said. “They’re made up.”

  Tim Gary shrugged. “No, I’m pretty sure it was a griffin.”

  The abbess shook her head. “Maybe it was a falcon.” She sighed. “Probably it was a falcon.”

  * * *

  Back at Little Neon, the abbess walked us to the door but stayed on the porch. She said it was time for her to get back to the convent in Providence. She was to lead the rosary at dawn. Tomorrow she would be back to her own work: visiting sick kids in the hospital and overseeing her order’s mustard production, marketing, and distribution. (She left a jar of Divine Dijon in the Little Neon fridge. They also made Hallelujah Hot Honey Mustard, she told us, and were looking to get into ketchups and aiolis.) She would come visit soon, she said. She shook our hands, and then she turned to go.

  “Wait,” Tim Gary said, reaching out his arms. “A hug.”

  She took hold of Tim Gary and drew him to her and, just as quickly, loosed her arms and was out the door. As she went, I watched her handbag swing.

  14.

  On a map, the city of Woonsocket looks like a gallbladder. A little pouch. Roads curved and cut at angles that made no sense; they stopped and started and went by new names. You could walk a hundred different stutter streets just to reach the city limits, where the streetlights fell away and the houses were closer to ruin and mutts that looked to be all muscle would bark until you were clear around the next corner. But there wasn’t much reason to go to the city limits. Most everything that happened in Woonsocket happened near the river, which ran jagged and cut the city in half. Just north of one of the river’s crooks was the library and Ick’s Tavern and the Tedeschi, and directly south was Hamlet Street, where the church and the parish and Little Neon sat on the same block as th
e Catholic high school.

  The parish we were to serve was named after Saint Gertrude, the patron saint of cats.

  * * *

  One morning not long after we first arrived, three men came by: the parish priest, the deacon, and the high school principal. I heard Baby answer the door. “Uh-oh,” he said. “Who’s in trouble?”

  Baby made himself scarce once the four of us went to the foyer and ushered the men inside. The principal, Mr. Ruby, looked fifty, with a low ponytail and one slow eye, one quick. Father Steve was maybe thirty, with round wire glasses, his face bright, his voice gentle. Deacon Greg was big-bellied and very old, long wiry hairs poking out of his nostrils. He had a booming voice, as if he was always ready for his turn at the lectern.

  Frances offered the men coffee or tea or water or Gatorade or Pepsi or skim milk. Tea, they said, so Therese boiled water and sank tea bags in mugs. It was too hot for tea, but it was too hot for everything.

  Mary Lucille yelped when she reached for her mug, and it slipped and crashed to the linoleum. Hot water shot up, and bits of porcelain scattered around the kitchen. Therese groaned. Mary Lucille was always careening into things, getting fingers stuck in doors, dropping whatever she was handed, and Therese was always exasperated.

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Mary Lucille said. “I’msorryI’msorry I’msorry.”

  The four of us stood there and stared at the mess, but the men jumped into action. Father Steve went off and came back with a broom and dustpan and ordered all of us to stay perfectly still. He crouched down with the dustpan, and Deacon Greg used a brush to sweep the white shards up off the floor, and Principal Ruby wiped up the hot water. They were all three very quiet, focused. They kept finding more and more pieces of cup; each time I thought this was the last of it, that surely they had swept it all, one of them pointed across the room, and his eyes lit up, and he said, almost excited, “There. Right there.” And they went together to go get it.